Very roughly, all variants of pantheism takes God to be an all-inclusive unity. If we assume ontological naturalism, this means that God is identical with the cosmos. This is not to say that each proper part of the universe is divine. Rather, the entire universe exhibits a range of qualities sufficient to ground our theological discourse. Exactly what the proper fundamental ontology must be for pantheism to be true is a matter of some dispute. While many associate pantheism with an ontological commitment to substance monism, pantheism does not imply any such commitment. A variety of different proposals have been offered both in the history of philosophy and in more recent work in philosophy of religion to account for how the cosmos can exhibit the right features to be described as divine. And there is no shortage of proposals of what qualities must be possessed for any such all-inclusive unity to be genuinely divine and the proper object of some religious attitudes.

Key works

Pantheistic ideas are present not only in the history of philosophy in the West, but also in movements in many world religions. Focusing on philosophy, some (e.g., Baltzly 2003) have argued that the Stoics should be regarded as pantheists. But Spinoza's Ethics (de Spinoza & Curley 1994:) is regarded by many as providing the first clear and systematic presentation and defense of pantheism. That said, some (e.g., Curley 1969)have denied that Spinoza is best understood as a pantheist (but see Guilherme 2008 for a reply to Curley). After Spinoza, among Anglophone philosophers, some philosophers leading up to today have expressed sympathy for pantheism (e.g., Edward Caird 1894, Josiah Royce 1901, T.L.S. Sprigge 2006, Grace Jantzen 1984, John Leslie 2001, and Peter Forrest 2016). Perhaps one of the most interesting recent developments in the literature on pantheism has been philosophers considering the implications of panpsychism (in particular, cosmopsychism) for pantheism (Goff forthcoming). For an opinionated (and somewhat controversial) book-length survey of pantheism, including its commitments and implications (both theoretical and practical), see Levine 1994. For a recent collection of essays by analytic philosophers of religion on alternative conceptions of the divine, including both defenses and critiques of pantheism, see Buckareff & Nagasawa 2016.

In the standard tradition of both Albanian studies and Western scholarship, including either any interested religious and political activism or less 'interested' lay people, endeavours of historical and textual fact-finding have been relevant only to re-confirm and indeed perpetuate the very meaning of a myth, according to which the thinking of Naim Frashëri was formed and dominated by Bektashism and his 'Albanianism' had a Bektashi foundation. In an earlier paper this myth was shown to be unreliable by arguing that Frashëri's (...) religious thinking was shaped by religious dualism. This paper argues further that Naim Frashëri went far beyond Bektashism in his heterodoxy, not only in a kind of liberation theology, but also by embracing a comprehensive pantheism which generated an active and all-inclusive attitude to Albanian identity, not necessarily limited in any special way to Bektashism. Methodologically, such a new picture must arise if the analysis of the historical and literary contextualization of Frashëri's major works is submitted to the perspective of social theoretical approaches to religion developed in sociology and anthropology. (shrink)

This article tries to draw the polemical genealogy of the term and concept of “libertinism”. Its sense, as it is forged in early Modernity, in the works of Calvin, and in the backgroud of the first Protestant Reformation, is merely contemptuous and, above all, it is due to a clearly critical strategy: the construction of a fictional enemy in confrontation with which it is possible to reinforce the basis of modern Christianism.

In God, Mind and Logical Space István Aranyosi takes the reader on a journey for the mind by revisiting the fundamental questions and the everlasting debates in philosophy of religion, ontology, and the philosophy of mind. The first part deals with issues in ontology, and the author puts forward a radical view according to which all thinkable objects and states of affairs have an equal claim to existence in a way that renders existence a relative notion. In the second part (...) another radical view is argued for, according to which some objects and states of affairs that do not exist in our world are nevertheless present in our surroundings by being real in their consequences. The final part argues that the only way to prove the existence of God is to accept a view called Logical Pantheism, according to which God is identical to Logical Space. (shrink)

This essay argues the Stoics are rightly regarded as pantheists. Their view differs from many forms of pantheism by accepting the notion of a personal god who exercises divine providence. Moreover, Stoic pantheism is utterly inimical to a deep ecology ethic. I argue that these features are nonetheless consistent with the claim that they are pantheists. The essay also considers the arguments offered by the Stoics. They thought that their pantheistic conclusion was an extension of the best science of their (...) day. Some of their most interesting arguments are thusa posteriori. (shrink)

Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason examines Coleridge's understanding of the Pantheism Controversy - the crisis of reason in German philosophy - and reveals the context informing Coleridge's understanding of German thinkers. It challenges previous accounts of Coleridge's philosophical engagements, forcing a reconsideration of his reading of figures such as Schelling, Jacobi and Spinoza. This exciting new study establishes the central importance of the contested status of reason for Coleridge's poetry, accounts of the imagination and later religious thought.

ABSTRACT: Although from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd AD the problems of determinism were discussed almost exclusively under the heading of fate, early Stoic determinism, as introduced by Zeno and elaborated by Chrysippus, was developed largely in Stoic writings on physics, independently of any specific "theory of fate ". Stoic determinism was firmly grounded in Stoic cosmology, and the Stoic notions of causes, as corporeal and responsible for both sustenance and change, and of effects as incorporeal and as (...) predicates, are indispensable for a full understanding of the theory. Stoic determinism was originally not presented as causal determinism, but with a strong teleological element, in the context of a theory of natural motions, which makes use of a distinction between a global and an inner-worldly perspective on events. However, Chrysippus also employed his conception of causality in order to explicate his determinism, and can be shown to have maintained a universal causal determinism in the modern sense of the erm. The teleological and mechanical elements of early Stoic determinism were brought together in Chrysippus' conception of fate, which places elements of rationality in every cause. (shrink)

The Opening Chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, called "Sense Certainty," is brief: 283 lines or about seven and a half pages in the critical edition of Hegel's works . Just over half the text is devoted to a series of thought experiments1 that focus on "the Here" and "the Now" as the two basic forms of immediate sensuous particularity Hegel calls "the This." The chapter's main goal is to demonstrate that, in truth, the object of sense certainty is precisely (...) the opposite of what it purports to be: "the This" is mediated abstract universality. However, not just the truth of Hegel's claim but its very meaning has been the subject of dispute from early on.2 A currently influential interpretive . (shrink)

German idealism stems in large part from Fichte’s response to a dilemma involving the concepts of pantheism, freedom and time: either time is the form of the determination of modes of substance, as held by a pantheistic or ‘dogmatic’ person, or the form of acts generated by human freedom, as held by an idealistic person. Fichte solves the dilemma by refuting dogmatism and deducing time from idealism’s first principle. But his diagnosis is more portentous: by casting the lemmas in terms (...) of person-types, he unintentionally invites Schelling’s philosophical rethinking of personality. In his middle period, Schelling argues for the consistency of the concepts of pantheism, freedom and time, claiming that it depends on a ‘good’ as opposed to ‘evil’ personality. However, since on his view personality is an absolute or originally undecided capacity for good and evil, the trio’s consistency is entirely contingent. In §1, I trace Fichte’s resolution of the dilemma. In §§2-3, I reconstruct Schelling’s arguments for consistency from the Freiheitsschrift and Weltalter, texts written just a few years apart. In §4, I allay a Kantian worry that this consistency relies problematically on the liberty of indifference or Willkür. (shrink)

According to theistic consubstantialism, the universe and God are essentially made of the same stuff. If theistic consubstantialism is correct, then God possesses the essential power to have knowledge de se of the contents of the mind of every conscious being internal to God. If theistic consubstantialism is false, then God lacks this essential property. So either God is essentially corporeal and possesses greater essential epistemic powers than God would have otherwise or God is essentially incorporeal and has a diminished (...) range of essential epistemic powers. In light of this dilemma, I argue that theists should accept theistic consubstantialism. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Mark Johnston’s panentheistic account of the metaphysics of the divine developed in his recent book, Saving God: Religion After Idolatry. On Johnston’s account, God is the ‘Highest One’ and is identified with ‘the outpouring of Being by way of its exemplification in ordinary existents for the sake of the self-disclosure of Being’. Johnston eschews supernaturalism and takes his position to be consistent with what he calls ‘legitimate naturalism’ which he takes to be some version of (...) ontological naturalism. But, as I will argue in what follows, Johnston’s legitimate naturalism is not clearly ontological naturalism. In what follows, given the other general features of his account, I argue that if we assume ontological naturalism, we should prefer a pantheistic conception of God over a panentheistic conception of God such as the one Johnston proffers. I take it that we can preserve everything Johnston wants in his account of divinity if we accept pantheism; but, if we wish to purge our conception of God of any supernaturalism, we should accept pantheism. (shrink)

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

Pantheist thinking in Islamic East and its adequacy to western pantheism is complicated and controversy problem. To make the problem somewhat clearer, it needs first of all to emphasize that it is possible to divide the development of the theories of world outlook and trends relied on essence of Koran’s esoteric meaning and religion towards inner world in Islamic East, into two direction: pantheist and “vahdat al-vujud”. The trend, in organization and formation of which ismailism, hurufism, nogtavism played important role (...) and some sects of tasavvuf considered to be heretic may be referred to the first orientation. As far as the second one, only tasavvuf may be referred to it. Though some issues, categories of each of them (orientations) seem alike at first sight, however there are the important differences in their fundamental principles from both ontological and epistemological points of view, it stipulated that, first of all, by the factors and purposes of their formation. Each trends of the first direction, philosophy of which been significant part of thinking system in Islamic East, left its traces in history ofphilosophy and possessed a vast circle of influence. There were many prominent figures whose works ranked among the philosophical treatises of the period, need particular study to complete Islamic philosophical panorama. (shrink)

Peter Forrest claims that his “Personal Pantheist” conception of God is in agreement with the Stoic pantheism. The traditional interpretation, however, treats the Stoic God as the non-personal universal law. I demonstrate that arguments in favor of the personal interpretation typically imply either a personalist or an anthropocentric metaphysical foundation. I also argue that the Stoics were neither personalists nor anthropocentrists, therefore those arguments should be rejected.

Mark Johnston’s book, Saving God (Princeton University Press, 2010) has two main goals, one negative and the other positive: (1) to eliminate the gods of the major Western monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as candidates for the role of “the Highest One”; (2) to introduce the real Highest One, a panentheistic deity worthy of devotion and capable of extending to us the grace needed to transform us from inwardly-turned sinners to practitioners of agape. In this review, we argue that Johnston’s (...) attack on traditional forms of monotheism has less force than his criticism of the “undergraduate atheists” (e.g., Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins); and that his candidate for Highest One is not the greatest possible being, and so could not play the role Johnston casts for it. -/- . (shrink)

In an essay on pantheism Schopenhauer observes that his chief objection against it is that it says nothing, that it simply enriches language with a superfluous synonym of the word “world.” It can hardly be denied that by this remark the great pessimist, who was himself an atheist, scored a real point. For if a philosopher starts off with the physical world and proceeds to call it God, he has not added anything to the world except a label, a label (...) which, if we take into account the ordinary significance of the word “God,” might well appear unnecessary and superfluous: one might just as pertinently say that the world is the world as that the world is God. Neither the Jew nor the Christian nor the Moslem understand by “God” the physical world, so that, if someone calls the physical world God, he cannot be taken to mean that the world is God according to the Jewish or Christian or Moslem understanding of God. Does he mean any more than that the physical world is ultimately self-explanatory, that no Cause external to the world, no transcendent Being is requisite or admissible, i.e. that there is no God? If that were all there is in pantheism, the latter would indeed be indistinguishable from atheism, and those who called Spinoza an atheist would be fully justified. (shrink)

The book transcends and transforms current work in the field of religious naturalism, gives pantheism new life over against the more fashionable panentheism, radicalizes and deepens the thought and practice of psychoanalysis with its creation of ordinal psychoanalysis, and creates a whole new way of doing phenomenology called ordinal phenomenology.

If Panentheism’s core thesis, that God is in the world, is to animate a spiritual approach to life, then we have to account for the way in which God is in the destructive or thanative dimensions of life. From the perspective of evolutionary ecology the universe is imbued with creative and destructive energies. The creative drive can be termed eros as creation occurs through the expansion of relational unities, holons. The destructive drive is termed thanatos and is the drive to (...) sever connection. An argument is developed from the perspective of evolutionary ecology to show how thanatos serves eros, serves the evolutionary unfolding of higher orders of communion. I suggest there are healthy and pathological expressions of the thanative drive. God within the thanative invites us to embrace the transformative potentials of suffering by integrating thanatos-in-eros. God as eros invites us to develop expanded modes of connection, inter-subjectivity and communion. (shrink)

Berkeley's immaterialism has more in common with views developed by Henry More, the mathematician Joseph Raphson, John Toland, and Jonathan Edwards than those of thinkers with whom he is commonly associated (e.g., Malebranche and Locke). The key for recognizing their similarities lies in appreciating how they understand St. Paul's remark that in God "we live and move and have our being" as an invitation to think to God as the space of discourse in which minds and ideas are identified. This (...) way of speaking about God, adapted by Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, opens up new ways to think about the relation between God and infinite minds. (shrink)

In his 2006 paper `Pantheists in Spite of Themselves: God and Infinity in Contemporary Theology,’ William Lane Craig examines the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Philip Clayton, and F. LeRon Shults, whose conceptions of God are influenced by Hegel. Craig shows that these thinkers’ Hegelian formulations lead to monism, despite their attempts to avoid it. He then attempts to refute Hegelian thinking by appealing to Cantor. I argue that that this refutation fails because Cantor and Hegel are far more amicable than (...) Craig realizes, as Small’s and Drozdek’s work shows. (shrink)

Is Solovyov''s philosophy pantheistic, is the individual absorbed by the absolute? Ehlen investigates Solovyov''s late Teoretieskaja filosofija (1897--99). Results: 1. According to Solovyov philosophy necessarily strives for unconditional truth. 2. Descartes could not prove the unconditional certainty of the substantiality of the human Ego. 3. The unconditional certainty, which we have with regard to the factual contents of our conscience is unable to base metaphysics. 4. The logical form of thinking is unconditional. 5. By searching for a truth, which meets (...) this form, reason modifies itself: the unconditional truth becomes the form of the searching reason. Conclusion: Although this searching for unconditional truth is stimulated by the absolute truth, nevertheless this searching is possible only as a free and responsible act. It is completed by practice (love). Solovyov''s articles on Comte (1898) and on The meaning of love (1982--94) do not contradict this outcome: the late Solovyov acknowledges the freedom and personality of the human Ego. (shrink)

This chapter is a case for the pantheist conception considered as a species of theism, rather than a rival to it. The starting point, the premise of the argument, is properly anthropomorphic metaphysics, which I propose as a rival to scientific naturalism; I begin, then, by stating my version of pantheism, by expounding PAM, and by sketching my argument.

I am not a pantheist and I don’t believe that pantheism is consistent with Christianity. My preferred speculation is what I call the Swiss Cheese theory: we and our artefacts are the holes in God, the only Godless parts of reality. In this paper, I begin by considering a world rather like ours but without any beings capable of sin. Ignoring extraterrestrials and angels we could consider the world, say, 5 million years ago. Pantheism was, I say, true at that (...) time. That is my qualified endorsement of pantheism. I then use the Sin premise, namely that we are capable of sinning, to argue that beings like us are not parts of God and I examine some consequences. (shrink)

Spinoza is a pantheist: he believes that everything that is, is God. Traditional Judaeo-Christian theologians dislike the idea, and Spinoza has always been unpopular for it. Nevertheless, I want here to suggest that, simply by following out the logic of omniscience and omnipotence—two attributes of God on which both Spinoza and his opponents are agreed—it is possible to arrive at a conception of God which is at least very close to Spinoza's own. I do not claim that any of the (...) arguments I use are to be found in Spinoza, but I do think that this way of thinking helps to explain the motives behind his ‘hideous hypothesis’. (shrink)

Monism is a doctrine that claims to deduce the entire system of knowledge from one first principle. It must be a system of a mutually connected propositions that are obtained by a methodologically reliable unfolding of one original proposition accepted as self-evident and unquestionable. Modern philosophy in its rationalist version, beginning with Descartes, tends precisely to this kind of monistic construction of the system of knowledge from a first principle. The striving toward monism is demonstrated most clearly in Spinoza's and (...) Fichte's systems. Spinoza's original principle is substance-that which exists by itself and is comprehended through itself. Fichte replaces substance by the Absolute Subject, the Absolute I, which by an act of self-positing brings itself into being and defines itself only by itself. In one and the other, all the determinations of the system must follow from the original principle with indisputable necessity. It is this logical necessity that claims to be the pure image of the scientific spirit that was valued so highly by modern European thought. (shrink)

The paper argues that Sergej Bulgakov's sophiology was an attempt, via antinomism or the philosophy of antinomies, to overcome the rationalism, monism, and determinism (in a word, "pantheism") of Vladimir Solov'ëv's philosophy of the Absolute understood as an abstract Trinitarianism. After detailing Solov'ëv's thought on the Trinity and Bulgakov's criticisms of it, the study then describes Bulgakov's antinomism and its application to the doctrine of God. However, it is contended that Bulgakov's antinomism ultimately falls into the same problems with pantheism (...) found in Solov'ëv and so the last part of the paper tentatively proposes resources in his work, stated in the form of a suggested "fourth (Bulgakovian) antinomy" between ousia (divine Being as such) and Sophia (the revelation in God and the world of the divine Being), that might help to avoid a collapse of God and the world by making the divine Being proper utterly transcendent and unknowable. (shrink)

The pantheon of seventeenth-century European philosophy includes some remarkably heterodox deities, perhaps most famously Spinoza’s deus-sive-natura. As in ethics and natural philosophy, early modern philosophical theology drew inspiration from classical sources outside the mainstream of Christianized Aristotelianism, such as the highly immanentist, naturalistic theology of Greek and Roman Stoicism. While the Stoic background to Spinoza’s pantheist God has been more thoroughly explored, I maintain that Hobbes’s corporeal God is the true modern heir to the Stoic theology. The Stoic and Hobbesian (...) gods are necessitarian, entirely corporeal, and thoroughly intermixed with ordinary bodies, while also supremely intelligent, providential, and good. And both gods serve as the ultimate source of diversity and change in a material world divested of Aristotelian forms and causes. Unfortunately, scholars on both sides of the long debate about the sincerity of Hobbes’s theism have not taken very seriously his late articulation of a corporeal theology. One probable reason for this dismissive attitude is a lack of thorough investigation of the historical precedents for such an unusual godhead available to Hobbes. The first part of this article attempts to establish a close congruence between the Stoic and Hobbesian gods. The second part traces the likely sources for Hobbes’s Stoic theology in his intellectual context. (shrink)